Tube

Reader Reptile writes in with the tip, and the pithy title inspiration. Seems like our friends to the frozen north (no, not Canada, Nokia-land!) finally released their iClone... er... Tube... er... Xpress Music.

The device, which started life as a complete rip-off proof of concept roughly 3 minutes after Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone live on the Macworld 2007 stage has taken a long -- looooooooong -- time to come to market. Was it worth the wait?

When the iPhone was introduced, Nokia's first official response was the corporate equivalent of a raspberry (the spitting kind, not the fruit!). Their second official response was to demo a device which so closely mimicked the iPhone that it quite possibly was one.

"If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia.

Well, proudly copy it they have! The final device, bewilderingly code-named "Tube" is ready for prime-time (or whatever time it is they relegate programs that knock off last season's hits).